NBC Is In The Middle Of A “Must See TV” Comedy Renaissance

Hey, sitcom fans, here’s a secret: NBC is low-key in the middle of a “Must See TV” resurgence.

Surprised? Yeah, it’s been a long time since NBC featured a comedy lineup as powerful as the iconic ’90s “Must See TV” one. Anchored by Friends and Seinfeld, NBC dominated the ’90s sitcom landscape. NBC saw a “Must See TV’ resurgence in the late ’00s with critically-acclaimed but low-rated shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation and Community. Now, out of nowhere, we may be at the dawn of a third “Must See” era — even if NBC isn’t making a big deal about it.

Well, NBC should be making a big deal about it. In the current TV season, the network has launched three absolutely stellar comedies: The Good Place, Trial & Error, and Great News. These shows have gotten high-fives from critics (yep, they’re three–for–three with Decider) but they deserve a lot more than that. They deserve to officially be entered into the “Must See TV” canon.

Photo: NBC

What makes this new batch of shows great is their tonal diversity. The Good Place, a philosophical comedy where the situation is “you’re dead,” marries Lost-style plot developments with Parks & Recreation‘s character-driven quirkiness. The oddball Trial & Error, which follows a “Northeasterner” lawyer working a small-town murder trial, is the true successor to Arrested Development’s mockumentary throne. Great News, which just launched last week, wears its 30 Rock and Mary Tyler Moore influences with pride — and more than lives up to those lofty comparisons.

The fact that NBC has three new potential must-see comedies should be a big deal, especially considering how much the network’s struggled with comedy over the past few seasons. The Office and 30 Rock concluded their runs in 2013. In 2014, the Peacock lost two comedies to streaming services: Community moved over to the now-defunct Yahoo! Screen, and the network famously passed on Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’sUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, basically gifting an Emmy-worthy (and eventually Emmy-nominated) sitcom to Netflix. The previous “Must See” era limped to an unceremonious end in 2015 when NBC burned off Parks & Recreation’s final season early in the year. Since then, NBC’s had moderate success with the workplace comedy Superstore and the topical family sitcom The Carmichael Show, but that’s been it — until now.

It’s appropriate that two of the three have positive adjectives in their titles. Yeah, these shows are very good, even great — and you should correct your error if you’ve missed them (nailed it). While most shows understandably take a while to find their footing, each one of these appeared on the primetime landscape fully-formed. The Good Place is packed with veterans both on-screen (sitcom legend Ted Danson) and off (Parks & Rec creator Michael Schur) — and it shows. The fast-paced series was made for binging. The final seconds of every episode either rearranges or blows up the series’ central premise; lesser sitcoms could have spent a hundred episodes playing with the show’s initial set-up. Not The Good Place. It has more adventurous paths to travel.

Photo: NBC

Trial & Error riffs on a newly familiar genre: the serialized true-crime documentary. The series is basically Making a Murderer with jokes — a lot of jokes. Trial & Error starts pulling off callbacks to great reward as early as episode two (“Mur-der board! Mur-der-board!”). Even though Trial & Error is on a network sitcom’s time constraints, it confidently devotes chunks of time to absolutely ridiculous comedy set pieces. The episode “A Hostile Jury” features one such extended set piece, one that should legitimately go down as one of the greatest. Trial & Error also features a career best turn from Sherri Shepherd, who belts out “I Will Always Love You” from the witness stand and paces back and forth backwards to fantastic comedic effect.

Like 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt before it, the delightful Great News doesn’t let a second go by without a gag, whether its series lead Briga Heelan getting smacked in the face with a street rat or difficult news anchors (played brilliantly by John Michael Higgins and Nicole Richie) bonding over lemonade/”Lemonade.” The brilliant thing about Great News‘ pilot, though, is that its characters don’t get lost in the barrage of jokes. Motivations are made clear for every one (a priest’s stirring eulogy unknowingly inspires both Katie and her mother Carol, Higgins’ news anchor decries ageism and “rock star” journalist David Muir), and then the show lets the cast ricochet off of each other.

Photo: NBC

With the rise of streaming and a year-round TV season, it’s harder than ever to see trends within network lineups. The Good Place finished its 13-episode first season in January, almost two months before Trial & Error debuted. Similarly, Great News dropped into Trial & Error’s Tuesday night slot once the true-crime-com completed its initial run. NBC has released all three of these shows in succession, even rushing through Trial & Error‘s season with back-to-back installments. Maybe they dropped all 13 episodes of Trial & Error in a month to encourage binge-watching on Hulu (which I did, thank you). Still, the way these three shows have been staggered makes them feel more like an afterthought. Instead of having a night dedicated to these comedies, it feels like NBC’s using them to fill holes in-between The Voice and the omnipresent Chicago shows.

Hopefully that will change for the next TV season. NBC has added three standout new comedies to its roster, but so far only The Good Place has been given the go-ahead for season two. With its lengthy history of critically acclaimed comedies, I can only hope that NBC wisely gives us more of Trial & Error and Great News — preferably with a “Must See TV” marketing push behind it. Until then, you should curate your own “Must See” experience on Hulu if these shows have slipped by unnoticed. It’s rare that this many great shows arrive on a network at once, and it’s a must see event when it happens.